Hi all! This thread was inspired by drkilstein's topic on close-to-vampire, blood craving copywriter wannabes, and was kindly approved by Michel Fortin (I wanted to make sure it's on-topic and relevant).

Let us all just admit that many of us have a problem with keeping our content unique for a long time. In fact, I've read numerous posts with the eternal 'What to do?' and 'Who to blame?' questions pepperred all over copywriters' and journalists' message boards and blogs. Guess what, most of them were somehow related to content theft.

I myself had this experience only once, and I have to explicitly state: I did not enjoy it. And anyway what's there to love about it? You nurse an idea, fish out all kinds of info, write and erase hundreds of times... Only to learn that some copywriter wannabe came along and swiped it while you were sleeping (now that's some script for Sandra Bullock's fans).

I already mentioned in the previous thread that we have come up with an anti-plagiarism tool to help us all get some good sleep at night. We called it ContentCop.

Now you may think it's a long spam message. In reality the situation is this: I'm a young copywriter (ok, compared to the Gurus here, I'm even far from being a wannabe) working with a a good software developer. He wrote a piece of software for me, and with time it grew into this:

ContentCop 2.7 Keep Your Content Unique

Take a look at it. Download it. Try it. We're not only looking for customers. We're seeking advice and feedback.

What I'm trying to say here is that this software can make your work just a tiny bit easier, and in this profession even a tiny bit matters. : )

p.s. It would be nice if you shared the experience you had with plagiarism.
It's not just a topic about our software.

Regards,
Galina

Personally, I've not seen much plagarism. I've seen plenty of badly swiped sales letters, but they don't bother me, because I don't think they work. (I mean really badly swiped)

I've had my stuff swiped and truth is it's flattering. It also was never plagarism. They change just enough words to make it "unique."

There is already a free service called "copyscape." I know a client of mine puts it on all his sites. This is how I knew how much of my stuff was being "swiped."

I don't know if this is anything like your software, but I'm not seeing this as much of an issue with direct response copywriting at least. Most of the bigshots just know their stuff is being swiped and don't mind. Dr. Kilstein has a book on how to swipe, called "Steal this book." The title of which is actually swiped from Abby Hoffman, ironically enough.

So IMO... and it's just my opinion, I don't think there is an issue for those of us who are DR writers and are swiped.

On the other hand, I think some anti-plagarism device for content writers and the like, could be very helpful.

Just my 2 cents.

I constantly have everything from my trading university name/concept ripped off to my salesletters and more.... and yes it bugs me, and if people try to ripoff my stuff to sell directly-competing products, I have one of my 2 attys send a DMCA C&D to both the offender as well as their hosting service, and contact their webhost directly to get their site in compliance or shut down.

Even had to file two civil suits, both were settled out of court (in my favor of course; helped pay for my google adwords bill for awhile). I don't take bs from anyone, I am born in the year of the dragon, and routinely roast the bad people out there.

bugs me like hell when people rip off my content, and I fight them hard, and have never lost a battle. Some ripoff people are naive enough to incorrectly assume that some people will "roll over" and be nice. I am definitely not one of them. Try and f--- me and you're in a world of hurt. I've had dozens of people fired for low-performance, back when I was a consultant for my kencalhoun.com/clients.htm . My boundaries are firm, fair, and honest. I don't let myself get taken advantage of, or 'write it off' or turn the other cheek.

I have had bad-behaving people ejected from seminars, I sue people, I put competitors out of business, I've shut down over 73 infringing ebay auctions of people who try and illegally resell my content, and play a very well-practiced, successful hardball in defense of my business interests. I don't bluff, I do what I say, and I win. I refuse to get f'd over by the multitude of bs people out there. Most folks are great to work with. That's good. Those that try and take advantage or steal from me or screw me, get burned hard.

I celebrate whenever one of my competitors folds (like Dave T did with his team at Wendy's). It amazes me that so many people "roll over" when they get screwed. Some of us fight back hard. And win.

I'm thinking of putting up a site where I have civil case wins scanned in and posted (with names blacked out) from court cases I've won, and other situations, as a deterrent to would-be thieves and lazy ripoff artists. Kind of like putting heads on pikes on the castle wall.

Ken

Hmm, sounds like another way of potentially "qualifying" your prospects. And it
is also making a serious statement for many people to get it loud and clear.

If you'll push through with that, it'll be interesting to see how it'll affect your
conversion rates...if it makes any dent at all.

BTW, Ken, is one of those 2 civil suits you mentioned about that chargeback
for the DVDs-or-something you mentioned at the Warriors before?

Galina, what are the software's current limits? Looks good, will test it later.

Those were valuable 2 cents, tvwriterguy. Thanks! And also a great addition to our marketing research results!

Wow, Ken! That's some clear message to potential thieves! I wish we had more people like this who actually fight for their content and don't let go. It never hurts to have a lawyer who'll be taking care of all the civil suits though.

How do you track down your ripped off content? How do you know it's been stolen?

Domain Name Guy, we'd appreciate it if you did!

What do you mean exactly by current limits? If you'd like to know how much content it can check over a certain period of time, then the answer is - as much as you want, unlimited. However, you have to make sure your bandwidth is high enough for the 'unlimited' part : ). Or did you have something else in mind?


Galina